Organization
Director
The director of PDI, Prof. Dr. Roman Engel-Herbert, is responsible for the institute and its scientific program and output. Roman’s career as a physicist brought him from Germany to North America, where he worked as a postdoc before accepting a professorship in 2010 at Pennsylvania State University. In 2021, Roman returned to Germany and became Director of PDI, 15 years after completing his PhD there under the direction of Klaus H. Ploog and Thorsten Hesjedal.
Managing Director
PDI is one of seven research institutes within the Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. (FVB). All institutes share a common legal entity and administrative infrastructure while maintaining scientific autonomy. The administrative director of FVB, Martin Böhnke, functions as the managing director of the institutes.
Scientific Advisory Board
PDI's scientific advisory board consists of outstanding national and international researchers. They advise the institute on scientific matters, discuss its scientific strategy, and once a year evaluate its research activities. The current members are:
- Prof. Dr. Dagmar Gerthsen, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
- Dr. Martin Behringer, Siemens HL, Osram Opto Semiconductor, Germany
- Prof. Dr. Oscar Dubon Jr., UC Berkeley, USA
- Prof. Nicolas Grandjean, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Laboratory of Advanced Semiconductors for Phototonics and Electronics, Switzerland
- Dr. Michelle D. Johannes, Center for Computational Materials Science, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington D.C., USA
- Dr. Heike E. Riel, IBM-Research, Zürich, Switzerland
- Prof. Dr. Werner Wegscheider, ETH Zürich, Advanced Semiconductor Quantum Materials, Laboratory for Solid State Physics, Switzerland
- Prof. Dr. Ursula Wurstbauer, Institut für Physik, Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster, Münster, Germany
- Dr. Elke Arenholz, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
- Prof. Dr. Jeremy Levy, University of Pittsburgh; Founding Director of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute